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“lived body,” the “incarnated living,” from within, intrinsically, the “excess” in theaffection itself, without reference to the having or the being, but not without reference tothe who. The pure object (which intellectualism and realism want to reduce to own-body)is itself a horizon since it is removed from a purely representative consciousness. This isa fertile idea, in terms of the issue of the body, since it reveals to us the deep reasons forwhich the character specific to the body was mostly overlooked in favor of a pure andsimple reduction of the body to the external object: “As regards the theory of the body,ontological monism had this decisive consequence of constantly preventing philosophicalreflection from rising to the idea of the subjective body. The body, a real element in theeffectiveness of the being in general, was necessarily something transcendent. Thusreduced to its subjective manifestation, what constitutes its essential being, i.e., the subjectivebody as inner transcendental experience of the movement, as well as the feeling,was mutilated.” 42 Now, if the experience of the body is that of a reality that I do not have,but am, then it belongs originally to the sphere of existence which is subjectivity itself. 43Not only is the body not an object amongst others, but it is not an object at all, i.e., itdoes not belong, in any way, to the order of exteriority. The issue of the fair distancebetween the “self” and its body 44 is expressed by the contribution of phenomenology tothe discovery of the subjective body which is at the origin of experience, but which,according to Henry, restricted its investigation to the relationship of this sensing body withwhat it senses, understanding it as an intentional relationship: “The body, which is the realsubject of knowledge, knows other bodies by relating intentionally to them. Consciousnessis the setting of this fundamental overflow by which it always throws itself out into aworld, into other bodies and its own. If we keep the word subjectivity, it must be said thatmodern phenomenology interprets our subjective body as an intentional body because ithas already interpreted subjectivity as an intentional subjectivity.” 45Biranian thinking on the body had already determined the cogito as a power of production,updating the radical insufficiency of those philosophies which tried to constitute the bodyas an object, particularly Cartesian philosophy: “The Cartesian cogito should thereforeundergo a radical change in value to adapt to the demands of the fundamental trend ofBiranian thought. It would have to shed this immobility of substance-thought to become,on the contrary, the very experience of an effort in its fulfilment, an effort with which,according to Biran, the very being of the self begins and ends.” 46 The hand (cf. Étiennede Condillac) is an example of the knowledge of own-body: constantly directed, it knowsitself first through the experience of a power of production. As an instrument, it revealsitself within a power of prehension which cannot be given in the element of exteriority.The knowledge of the hand by itself is effected in the effort as pure auto-affection. Whatis specific to the effort is that it is given to itself without exteriority: the “content” whichaffects the effort is no more than the effort itself or, in other words, the being of the effort isthis profound cohesion with itself, this impossibility of self-detachment, pure immanence,auto-affection, this presence unto oneself, without distance. In the effort, I propel a movementthat is such that I do not detach myself from it: the “self” is only at the root of the42Ibid., 261.43“Le corps, dans sa nature originaire, appartient à la sphère d’existence qui est celle de lasubjectivité elle-même.” Ibid., 11.44Xavier Thévenot, “L’Église et le corps. Axes de recherches,” Cahiers Universitaires Catholiques2 (1991): 15.45Henry, Auto-donation, 88.46Ibid., 72; “Cette pensée primitive, substantielle, qui est censée constituer toute mon existenceindividuelle, … je la trouve identifiée dans sa source avec le sentiment d’une action ou d’un effort voulu.”Ibid.159